June 12, 2009

Morning Joe

There's been a curious practice among some members of the news media for some time. In order to look "fair" and "balanced" it seems that the general practice is to say "well, both sides are doing it" and let it go at that.

Case in point.

This morning just as I was waking up, I saw a few moments of Morning Joe. In their discussion of how both sides are politicizing the shooting at the Holocaust Museum, they equated this:

where at about 45 seconds in, Rush Limbaugh says:

Well who did he hate? He hated both Bushes. He hated neocons. He hated John McCain. He hated republicans - he hated jews, as well. He believed in an inside-job conspiracy theory of 9/11. This guy is a leftist, if anything. This guy's beliefs, this guy's hate stems from influence that you find on the left, not on the right.

Back in April, there was a huge fuss over an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security warning that current conditions resemble those in the early 1990s — a time marked by an upsurge of right-wing extremism that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Conservatives were outraged. The chairman of the Republican National Committee denounced the report as an attempt to “segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration” and label them as terrorists.

But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.

There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.

Yea, those are the same. Exactly the same. Both sides are doing exactly the same thing.

I agree! Paul Krugman's points were reasonable, and in my opinion, correct! The right has been "stoking the fire" with talks of revolution, "take your country back," etc. I can't believe the rest of the wimps on Morning Joe are afriad to say anything as Joe rants about Paul Krugman.